What is the Information Age? Everyone uses the term, but nobody defines it. In this paper, I formulate the principles of the Information Age and use the computer industry as proof of its existence. I answer some burning questions: What is the Information Age, how does it differ from the Machine Age, where is it leading, and what does it have to do with computers? I examine what it means to live an...
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The World Wide Web Test Pattern is a Web site that was conceived as a general-purpose test bench so that users and developers can check for HTML compliance. While still under construction, it already includes a standard suite of tests for text, audio, graphics, meta-links, animations, forms and tables. The URL is http://www.uark.edu/∼wrg/. There is a tiled background to the WWW Test Patter...
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Selecting from a large, expanding collection of images requires carefully chosen search criteria. We present an approach that integrates a relational database retrieval system with a color analysis technique. The Chabot project was initiated at our university to study storage and retrieval of a vast collection of digitized images. These images are from the State of California Department of Water R...
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An innovated system is described which integrates data from heterogeneous multimedia domains. This general-purpose framework uses the concept of a `mediator' to efficiently support multimedia reasoning. The Media Abstraction Creation System (MACS) implements algorithms for creating or querying media abstractions, for relaxing queries, and for allowing incremental query modifications. We have also ...
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Research on ways to extend and improve query methods for image databases is widespread. We have developed the QBIC (Query by Image Content) system to explore content-based retrieval methods. QBIC allows queries on large image and video databases based on example images, user-constructed sketches and drawings, selected color and texture patterns, camera and object motion, and other graphical inform...
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Addresses the problem of similar-shape retrieval, where shapes or images in a shape database that satisfy specified shape-similarity constraints with respect to the query shape or image must be retrieved from the database. In its simplest form, the similar-shape retrieval problem can be stated as, “retrieve or select all shapes or images that are visually similar to the query shape or the qu...
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Discusses the value of profiles and how they differ from standards. Profiles address the problem of computer standards not being precisely designed to meet end-user needs. A standard's scope is generally much narrower than an entire computer system. To support user needs, a particular computer system may have to comply with many individual standards. Several factors may limit the scope of each sta...
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Images are being generated at an ever-increasing rate by sources such as defence and civilian satellites, military reconnaissance and surveillance flights, fingerprinting and mug-shot-capturing devices, scientific experiments, biomedical imaging, and home entertainment systems. For example, NASA's Earth Observing System will generate about 1 terabyte of image data per day when fully operational. A...
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The interaction of textual and photographic information in an integrated text/image database environment is being explored. Specifically, our research group has developed an automatic indexing system for captioned pictures of people; the indexing information and other textual information is subsequently used in a content-based image retrieval system. Our approach presents an alternative to traditi...
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Copyright protection exists in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression. Copyright, however, does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated or embodied. The copyright owner has the exclusive right to do or authorize any of the follow...
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End-user software development is a growing avocation in every industry and every country. By the middle of the next century, computer literacy and programming skills will be almost as common as reading and writing skills. Almost every knowledge worker in the world will be able to program if he or she sets out to do so. The implications of widespread end-user software are only just beginning to be ...
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We define the engineering of complex computer systems as all activities pertinent to specifying, designing, prototyping, building, testing, operating, maintaining, and evolving complex computer systems. While in the past, relatively noncomplex traditional systems sufficed for most computer control applications, the new and emerging demands of applications and the evolution of computer architecture...
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Aims & Scope

Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, publishes peer-reviewed articles written for and by computer researchers and practitioners representing the full spectrum of computing and information technology, from hardware to software and from emerging research to new applications.